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Assignment 5 TAOP

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Entroido Entrimo 2012

Carnival is a very remarkable traditional celebration in the northwest of Spain. It is a very old feast rooted in the nights of time (some people say it has celtic origins). There is even a word in the local language (galician) for carnival, it is called "entroido". Long time ago when I was a child, I never missed the opportunity to join the celebrations of "entroido" together with my parents, and later with friends. It used to be a very special event in the year, and there were families preparing it for months in advance. Things have changed a lot (when I was a child there was some traditional dresses that are now lost), but in my little village people still celebrate "entroido", and there is even a contest to the best group and individual child disguise organized by the municipality.

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Preparation: Last time I was present for the "entroido" was more than 20 years ago, so I was not completely sure of what I was going to find.

16:00. The Gathering. People meet outside of friends and neighbours houses, begin

Given the strong crisis in Spain I even expected no celebration at all. As a matter of fact the municipality of Entrimo is small, with a high rate of unemployed people and an even higher rate of quite old pensioners.

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Many people here have still an domestic economy based in small farmlands, some animals, and few of them live from commerce.

16:30 Some people gather at the place of the parade. Everybody is going there.

Nevertheless I cleaned my equipment the day before and I had my camera and three lenses (covering various focal distances from 17mm till 200mm), I knew the day was going to be sunny, and my idea was to record the event as if it was for a local newspaper, from the first gatherings and preparations, then the parade (if it can be called like that) till the "toural" (the square in the middle of the village, where the fairs and markets and festivities are held), and lastly the contest with the jury and the end of the celebration.

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Execution: The event started around 16:00 and finished around 19:00 hours (more or less). I felt quite free to photograph because everybody here know each other, and many people indeed know me or my family. I had nevertheless a couple of parents asking me what was the purpose of the (children) photographs, to which I always replied that I am studying photography, and I my intention was to photograph the event as the last project for my course, and therefore the photographs were for my own use.

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One important remark: I never asked anyone to pose for the camera. The reason being that I was searching for natural and candid shots on one side, and that I wanted to be as discrete and unremarkable as possible on the other side.

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I always tried to move around the subjects (when that was possible) to find the best angle (for some photographs where the action was happening in a split second, that was not even possible). In other words, the photographs were people are looking at the camera were not planned or directed in any manner. During the event I tried to move myself quite a lot and have different perspectives and views, but I focused in children because they are the real soul and goal of the celebration.

17:00 The parade is going to start. It will go along the main street of the village.

The parade is the climax of the celebration

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Selection: I made a few hundred photographs and I went to several filtering and refinement iterations, together with croppings, to come to the final set, which I believe reflects the whole event quite well, and tell not one, but many linked stories.

From the last set I picked up a first and last shot for the begin and end of the story, and I also re-sorted part of the group.

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The selection was the most difficult problem not only because of the big number of initial shots (even discarding the ones with severe blur or focusing problems), but also because of the emotional attachment with the people and

the subject. Postprocessing just to control levels, in some cases I also cropped the photographs to remove unnecessary or annoying things out. Other remarks: I have processed this photographs with music in the background. I am even getting used to photograph with music, and although I might be wrong (most likely), I believe there is a strong connection between photography and music (and I would like to further investigate that (I am sure that there must be books on this subject). At least this relation works for me.

For this sequence, and provided that I am great fan of Brazilian music it would be (no doubt) "Vai Passar" of Chico Buarque de Holanda. This is a story of people (mainly children), colour and friendship in the context of a renewed tradition.

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Corollary.- After several failures I was becoming tired and frustrated. This set is satisfactory to me, both in terms of execution and final result. Of course it can always be better. In particular for the cover shot I would have preferred some kind of view including some representative element of the village (something like the square seen from above or similar). The cover shot chosen has to me nice properties (the colour, the combination of children and disguises which leads to the carnival, etc...), but misses other things (in particular something that unmistakably linked to the village).

The final shot is a little bit dark, but I find it fantastic, because of the child expression, and also because of the mountains and houses in the background that anyone in the whole region would link to the village of Entrimo. Dark also goes with the mood of the end of a celebration.

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It could be argued that someone with the knowledge would link the walls in the cover shot, and the trees in the background to the main square of Entrimo, but I reckon it is a difficult argument to hold on to.

Children participating in the contest receive a number.....

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.......and pass the catwalk in front of the members of the jury......

Relation with the previous parts of the course: In my opinion some of the shots also show some nice compositional elements both in terms of contrasts (e.g. child vs. adult, light vs. dark, one vs. many; red vs yellow) and elements of design (the vertical lines of the trees in some of the photographs of the main square, the implicit lines of the eyesights, etc...). The colour comes together with the carnival and it is certainly also a relevant element for most of the shots (e.g. the cover one). The chosen photographs also show some quite different lightings (backlight, axislight, crosslight, and also some more diffuse light in the last shots At the end (18:30) the prices are given both for the groups under the trees). and the children.......

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Number of photographs: It could be argued whether 23 shots are too many for the assignment. I have tried to select photographs from different moments of the day and particularly photographs that do tell a story (even if a trivial one).

The day is coming to an end, some had won some others not, but everybody had fun. The end is seen with a mixture of tiredness, satisfaction and melancholy. More to come in 2013.

In fact I have tried (following my interpretation of a tutor advise in the last report) to reduce the labels to the minimum (for most of them I have decided there was even no need for a text) and to let the photographs alone to tell the story. I have asked some fellow amateur photographers if the sequence made sense for them and with some different opinions it made sense to all of them. That, of course, doesn't mean anything, and it is for the tutor and the assessors to decide if this is the case or not, but at least I have tried to seek for other points of view. Seen in a different manner, 23 shots for 12 pages (between 6 and 12 pages says the assignment text) means a little bit more than two photographs per page (and most newspapers' paper size is bigger than an A4) which is more than reasonable.

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This document has been drafted as a possible layout of the images (notice that although the document has more than twelve pages, the photographs are on the first twelve). Reasons for the selection of this set: The main reason is that I see this carnival sequence as having more variety in the type of photographs than any of the other sequences before, and on top of that the light conditions were much better allowing a more visually attractive set(in terms of colour and quality). These were the previous attempts:
Walk on a remote village: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/01/failure-1-of-assignment-5-applying.html Kings' Day: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/01/failure-2-for-assignment-5-kings-day.html A fencing training: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/02/failure-3-for-assignment-5-fencing.html The flower auction with children: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/02/bloemenveiling-with-school.html The story of the shell: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/02/another-failure-for-assignment-5fake.html An Aikido trip to Antwerp, Yamashida sensei: http://leopin-socalcos.blogspot.com/2012/02/aikido-training-in-antwerp.html

The fencing and aikido sets were made under very difficult light conditions forcing me to use a high ISO with the consequence of a high level of noise. The king's day had similar problems and although the story could have been nice, much more time and freedom of movement would have been needed to produce a decent set. Again the flower auction was made under appalling lighting conditions.........had I been allowed to use my wireless flash, things would have been better. All of those sets could have been possibly OK for the assignment, but they are not so visually attractive as this last one. Additionally I made this last one without any constraints (like children around, or a time to finish or people supervising if I am using flash or not, or people checking that I was not taking too many photographs of their

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children, etc, etc, etc.....) and I think this reflects on the result (or at least so I want to believe). The shell story was a failure for many reasons, the more important (because it was a lesson to me about myself) is that I had the feeling that I was creating a fake, artificial, false, forced story. I didn't feel identified at all with what I was doing, it was a lie. More importantly I didn't enjoy it. It had an advantage with regard to any of the other ones however, I could have built it progressively without any window of opportunity constraints. Books and other materials:
Three Tips to Help Your Photos Tell A Story by Michael Freeman, September 2011 http://photo.net/columns/michael-freeman/three-tips-to-help-your-photos-tell-a-story/

Maria Short, "Context and Narrative", Basics Creative photography 02, AVA publishing, 2011 Photography and narrative: What is involved in telling a story? by David Campbell
http://www.david-campbell.org/2010/11/18/photography-and-narrative/

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